Fariha Bhatti 
Call of Duty recently added a new title to the franchise with Black Ops 6 alongside promises to improve the long-used Ricochet anti-cheat engine. So did it work? A new study revealed the answer to how Ricochet stacks up against other anti-cheats.
Since 2003, Treyarch has released over 20 main titles to its flagship franchise, Call of Duty. As one of the largest franchises in the shooter genre, it’s no surprise that Treyarch decided to use its homemade anti-cheat, Ricochet, to ward off cheaters. Whether it has been successful in achieving this goal has been a subject of debate, but a new study has offered insights into Ricochet’s viability as an anti-cheat system.
According to Treyarch, Richochet is a kernel-level anti-cheat, which means it has access to your computer above your hardware drivers. Typically, an anti-cheat with Ring 0 access is considered the best in gaming, but this study results reveal otherwise.
How good is Call of Duty’s anti-cheat engine?
Call of Duty’s Ricochet anti-cheat engine was ranked among the worst in a study of 11 top first-person shooters.
According to a UK study, CoD’s anti-cheat is among the least effective available. Compared 10 other rival shooters, Richochet came out in number eight. This is despite Ricochet having access to the user’s computer to the degree where it’s a security concern. Here are the games and their standings:
- Valorant
- Fortnite
- Battlefield 2042
- Rainbow Six Siege
- The Finals
- Overwatch 2
- Apex Legends
- Call of Duty: Warzone
- Counter-Strike 2
- Team Fortress 2
- Battlefield 1
The experiment took into account cheater detection during the main menu, in-game, and in subsequent games if cheats went undetected. According to the findings, Ricochet struggled to identify kernel-level cheating patterns in most scenarios. While it did flag cheaper cheats, the penalties were not as harsh compared with the top games on the list.
Research says that part of the reason CoD ranks so low despite kernel access is the lack of hardware bans and lighter punishments for repeat offenders. This is in harsh contrast to Overwatch 2, which has a less invasive user mode anti-cheat but ranked higher due to aggressive prevention and hardware bans. The combination of these actions reduces the chances of repeat cheaters, indirectly impacting player experience from the anti-cheat system.
Some CoD players did report HWID bans in older titles like MW2, but players can use spoofing software to evade these. While this results in a permanent suspension, the official website no longer mentions the possibility of a hardware ban. At maximum, there are permanent suspensions across all accounts, but repeat offenders may still use the same device to create new accounts.
While all of this sounds pretty bad, Ricochet is not the worst anti-cheat. The only anti-cheat worse than Ricochet is VAC, Valve’s in-house user mode tool that relies on machine learning for detection. VAC is used across Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, games that have notorious issues with cheating.
This is quite shocking for long-time CoD players, as the in-house anti-cheat ranks even lower than the youngest shooter title on the list: The Finals, which was released in 2023.
Activision claims that Ricochet is now more advanced with Black Ops 6, but it will take some time before players can weigh in. Regardless, the fact that the anti-cheat engine is invasive enough to be a security threat and still can’t catch cheaters is a sad indictment.
